What the? – 台博客 Taiwan!

stuff on that scooter

sylvia — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:50:32 +0000

We’re over 4 months into our stint here in Taiwan, so its about time I post a few pictures of the obvious annoyance to Westerners: Taiwanese scooters. The city is full of them, yes. This is Asia, its a common thing, the majority of commuters use scooters, I get it. They weave in and out of traffic, have free reign over sidewalks as they beeline to a parking spot (which by the way seems to be any spare piece of cement not already occupied by a scooter). They absolutely do not yield to pedestrians carrying small babies at intersections (this I can firmly atest to) and seem to have no environmental emmision laws since most of them sputter out grey puffs of pollution conveniently right at baby stroller level. That’s all fine and dandy. The real shocker to me is the bizarre things people transport on their scooters. Within the first week here we already had the shock of seeing our garbage collection dude hauling our trash away on his scooter, but here is a collection of other bizarre sights I’ve seen:

Safety First!

And don’t think these guys go any slower than the rest. You’d think a 6ft mound of trash on your scooter would slow you down on those turns. Nope, they just make being a baby carrying pedestrian just that much more fun.

(next instalment, people and animals on scooters)

I Just Paid $17,367 at 7-Eleven

jason — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:42:31 +0000

Today I paid $17,367 (about C$480 or £364) at 7-Eleven. In this country everyone pays their bills at the convenience store. The woman at the cash didn’t even flinch at my wad of bills.

.. and yet I still only got one of their stupid stamps.

Mystery solved! – He’s the garbage man

sylvia — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:51:24 +0000

So my mystery man has been revealed! He’s not the sandwich van man, he’s the garbage collection man! (and wow is my Chinese bad!) We live in a strange mixed zoned building. It’s half office and half residential. So some of my neighbours include an Ad agency and Jazz Fashions but also regular people on other floors. Since it was probably originally an office building there are no garbage shoots, or areas to dump your rubbish, so you have to hire a service to come collect it from your door several times per week. And that toothless smiley old man is our guy!

I never would have guessed given that he came on a Friday (collection is Tues,Thur and Sat) and that he was wearing a scooter helmet. Would he really collect our rubbish on a scooter?? The answer is yes:

Strapping all the rubbish onto the scooter

We’re watching this from our window thinking: No, he’s not really going to take it on a scooter?! Wait he is. How is he going to ride it?!

Yeehaw!

Wow – this was our first collection so we had moving boxes, packing materials plus regular trash. Had we known we’d at least cut down the boxes into smaller pieces. What I really think about is Mips’ giant wooden pee stained cat carrier crate that needs to be tossed. Is he really going to strap wooden box onto his scooter and ride that pee stained beast down the street?!

Diaper hunting

sylvia — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:13:25 +0000

Spent the last few days getting ourselves sorted and set up in our new place. Took a few tries to find baby diapers, however… at the pet store today we saw this! Diapers for dogs:

Poochy pampers

Don’t worry, they had ones for cats too. I just can’t picture any cat tolerating a nappy. This brings a whole new level to stuffonmycat.com